Tabris and Shax

A tiny tale of Good and Evil.

 

"Come on, Adam," she told him, presenting him a tiny piece of paper with a cartoonish red apple across its face.  “I promise you’ll enjoy it.  Charina has never steered me wrong.”  As she spoke his reservations succumbed to a gentle nibble on her lip and a smile that could charm the leviathan.

“Where’d you find this anyway?” Adam retorted in a futile effort to delay the acid’s inevitable consumption.  All the two had planned on obtaining for this occasion was a couple of joints, which was about as far as Adam was willing to journey down the path of substance.  But her excitement was taking root in him, and his opinion on the matter was altering.

“I told Charina that we just wanted some smoke,” she defended in her best Daddy’s girl voice from behind widened eyes, “but she talked me into getting a couple of hits of this instead.  It’s not like it’s gonna kill you or anything.”  She had already eaten hers, and with a giggle she thrust the other hit into Adam’s hand.  Adam took a brief look at the tiny square of paper resting on the tip of his index finger.  What’s the harm? he thought to himself as he placed the paper on his tongue.

The fact he failed to put up much of a fight would never occur to Adam.  He didn’t know anything about LSD, yet he never once asked his wife about the dangers or the repercussions.  He simply took the apple from her outstretched hand and ate.  Supposedly this is what love is—faith.

Everything was perfect for the newlyweds' adventure.  There were seven candles burning on the glassy marble mantle in the spacious den, and a courteous hint of frankincense tinged the air.  All of Adam's pets were laying asleep in one nook or another, all seemingly breathing in rhythm to the ambient music.  It was their first night of rest since they moved into the house Adam's father had given the couple as a wedding present, and tonight was to be their new home's christening.  Food, wine, each other—they had everything they needed.

Adam sat with his gaze upon his painting of an angel and a demon, still wet from his last brush stroke a few hours before.  The angel and demon sat under a majestic tree, each holding a cup and looking at each other thoughtfully.  Despite all the busy buzzing entailed by a big move, Adam, in a rare fever of inspiration, had found the time to set up his easel and spend an hour or three each night to stand before the canvas and slice away at its blanche façade.

Though not graced with a talented brush hand, Adam found a certain serene pleasure in smearing paint on canvas.  (Most any painter would tell you that “smear” was the best descriptor for his brushstroke.  In fact a rude former acquaintance once told Adam’s wife in a wine-drunken fervor that Adam’s paintings would be most revered—if Adam was blind.)

Nearly an hour had passed and he was growing impatient.  His telling sigh was dismissed by an impudent "you'll see" from his wife, and a quick glance behind him revealed her sprawling across the plush carpet with her eyes fixed on the millions of silvery stars needling through the majestic, vaulted glass ceiling.

He turned back to his painting and his eyes were instantly drawn to the angel and demon sipping their cups of tea.  An acute and baffling trepidation erupted in his solar plexus—he had painted the two each with his teacup nestled in his hands in front of him, but neither was supposed to be drinking.  Just then the grandeur of his den, his father’s gift, was seized from his consciousness and cast into oblivion.  Only the painting remained.  The wet paint broke free from the confines of the canvas, bleeding into the void around him and worming its way under his skin.

The demon Shax gave him a sly smile and his angel counterpart Tabris nodded a greeting to the newcomer before they both turned their attention back toward each other to discuss a more pressing matter.  Adam could only loose a muted gasp before he felt a snake burst out of the apple in his stomach, slithering upward and replacing Adam’s throat with its body.  The snake's head became Adam's tongue, and every attempt Adam made to scream was thwarted by the snake's fangs thrusting themselves into his cheeks.

Nothing made any sense to Adam anymore.  At once he felt the most bitter cold and scorching heat, and true to his painting the sun and moon both shone at once on the glassy scape.  A single tree stood in the center of all of this, shielding Tabris and Shax from the calm gales and rainy clear sky.  Unable to contemplate any of this madness, Adam shattered into forty pieces, with his eyes landing at the feet of the two otherworldly men, still coolly sipping their tea.  Each reached down and took one of Adam's pupils, and exchanged a glance (of which Adam had now the oddest perspective) of good fortune, for Adam had forgot to paint them saucers for their teacups.

 

"You know the only thing with you," a smug and somber Shax decried, "is that you care too much how others live, but yet in sin you let them die."  (Luckily Adam's ears had landed close enough to overhear the conversation.)

"Now come," retorted Tabris with a cheeky smile.  "How can you fault me, when my love of free will blesses me with tolerance of scoundrel scum the likes of you?"

Adam could not see it because Shax had set his teacup on top of his eye, but Shax let a smile creep its way across his face.  The two shared a hearty laugh at Tabris' break in the sternness of their talk.  Despite being at opposite ends of the spectrum of good and evil, the two were quite friendly with each other and spent a lot of time together.  Each fondly called the other his befriended foe, though they had never had a chance to befriend each other.  It was as if they had been both friend and foe since the beginning, and there was never a time in which the two were not just that.

After each let the laughter pass, they took in the juxtaposed din of singing and screams and perfect silence.  (Poor Adam cried, certain he was in Hell, but his tears came out as hot tea that refilled Tabris' and Shax's cups.)  "The only thing with you," said Tabris, returning to the topic they had left, "is even though to Shax you're true, you still forsake the Golden Rule."  Shax sat silent, contemplating Tabris' charge.  This silence made Tabris bold, so he rambled on. "Your disciplines are so, so very disciplined, your presence is so powerful and ever-present, and you reap success from everything you sow, so even if your fruits are poison in disguise..."

Still met with Shax's silence, Tabris gathered steam.  "To think of all the tricks you play and lies you lay and tears you drop and men you fall—”

"Enough," Shax interrupted, his somber smugness returning.  "Your tolerance is clearly not a conduit for thinking clearly.  Contemplate a while the Golden Rule, good sir—now who's to say that I do not abide?"

Adam (who could no longer cry, since the cups were both full) found comfort knowing he wasn't the only one who was completely lost at this retort--Tabris seemed both appalled and perplexed.  "So do you mean to tell me that you want to be a victim, hmm?" Tabris ever-so-subtly scornfully shot back at Shax.  "You kill and yet you say you do abide. So that would mean you wish to die."  Tabris sat back a little, thinking he had stymied one of Shax's many attempts to play the devil's advocate.

 

A long pause settled in between the two, or at least Adam thought it should be long.  What was time in a place like this?  An epoch passed with his every breath, yet he had to concentrate to distinguish one action from the next lest they happen all at once.  Adam labored from under the teacups to shoot his split gaze back and forth between Tabris and Shax.  Adam was deathly curious to see who would snap the growing tension; would Shax present a snappy retort to Tabris’ charge, or would the silence persist until Tabris dismissed Shax’s claim as foolish, thus proclaiming himself the victor?

"Would it surprise you if I wanted nothing more but daggers in my heart?"  Shax finally offered in a low voice. Tabris was caught off his guard by this insinuation, and Shax, preying on his counterpart's silence, pressed onward.  "I'm not a demon by my choice, you know, for ever since the Light have I remained in Darkness.  I do remember once I thought that I did want to be surrounded by the Light, so stealthily I sneaked right through the Pearly Gates to sit with all the angels.  I was only there a moment 'fore I felt this masochistic longing for my home in Hell.  So I returned to Hell, my home, not with a hanging head but with a lesson learned: I am, I am, and I must be the demon I was meant to be.  If that should mean I wish to be the victim of a trick or lie, so mote it be.  If that should mean in secret that I pine for someone, anyone, to put a dagger through my heart, so mote it be.  For I will know that I have done unto the others as I have wished the others do to me."

Tabris sat without reaction for a moment before he gave a subtle grin.  "Of course you know you'll never die--you are a demon after all."

Shax laughed.  "Who says a demon cannot dream?" Tabris' smile returned as the two finished their second cup of tea (compliments of Adam’s despair).  They nodded their goodbyes and left their dishes (and subsequently Adam’s eyes) by the tree as they walked their separate ways.

 

 

The next morning Adam awoke in his wife's embrace, still trembling from what he had seen the night before.  By what must have been divine grace he was finally retrieved from the enveloping vision that had removed him completely from his reality.  Even after he escaped the painting and the trip regressed, he had tried and failed again and again to wrap his mind around what Shax had said to Tabris—and Tabris’ reaction, for that matter.  Even as he slept he dreamt of the angel and demon; Adam simply could not escape the gravity of what had happened to him.

Finally he tried to speak but as his voice muddled through his throat and slid over his tongue, a stabbing pain shot back down his neck and into his gut.  "Shh, no, dear," his wife quickly interjected as she placed her hand over his mouth.  "You bit your tongue last night. Let it rest a while."  The taste of iron lingering in the crevices between his teeth reminded him of the snake, and he failed to stifle a tremor.

Adam reached for the blanket to cover his cold and naked body, and once nestled under it he succumbed again to sleep.

 

 

‡

Author's Note

This is my first real attempt at a short story. Be gentle.

Reviews

[John Jones]

That actually was really good, especially if it was a first attempt at a first story. I guess though if I were you I would try to set the mood better by making the intro a little longer and more detailed. I'm not saying drag it out, but just try to set the mood better if you know what I mean.
And your ending needs to be redone completely. I mean, the ending doesn't seem, believable. I mean, a guy doesn't pass out for the night, and wake up to have his wife tell him that he bit his tongue and that he needs to rest.
But I mean, your middle part is excellent. Just work on your intro and ending and this will be great.